


i will always be the one to find you

by AsadMinQamar



Category: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsadMinQamar/pseuds/AsadMinQamar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Devotion is the greatest gift. Written for the word prompt 'sunrise'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will always be the one to find you

**Author's Note:**

> This is cross-posted from my Final Fantasy community on LiveJournal : DarkestDragoon.

rufus

Shin-Ra is finished. The building is gone, the city demolished. There’s nothing left to dictate, and no grand army to send on another blind conquest. All it took was that one attack- one cold, harsh beam from the WEAPON and everything fell to pieces without even enough grace to shatter.  
  
All that remains is blackened steel and dust.  
  
When Rufus wakes up, he’s covered in the ashy remains of his tower. After the explosion, when the windows blew in and the glass shredded everything in its path, after the tremors of the foundation giving way and the floor crumbling to nothing, he thought he would be dead.  
  
There’s pain in every corner of his body. Unbelievable, searing, throbbing pain. He makes an effort to wiggle his fingers and toes and he’s surprised when all of them are in tact. It’s wrists after that, his ankles and then his elbows. Small, minute movements- just enough to make sure everything still works.  
  
It takes him a moment to realize exactly where he is- pinned between his desk and one of the ceiling supports. The desk is actually the lucky part of this. It’s falling on its side during the explosion created a nook for Rufus to land in where otherwise, he might be... slightly more impaired than he is now. But the wreckage isn’t so bad that he can’t slither out on his own, moving slowly and trying not to shift anything too abruptly.  
  
When he puts his right foot down for the first time, pain shoots all the way up to his hip and he’s glad no one is around to hear his hiss of pain. This complicates things.  
  
  


reno

“This ain’t funny anymore, man. We’ve gotta go in there!” Reno growls, his fingers tangled up in Tseng’s slick black jacket. “He’s still alive, I can feel it.”  
  
Rude and Elena stand a ways off, making only small glances over to where Reno is breaking just about every rule in the book by taking their boss by the shirt and shaking him. It’s a shocking sight, but not necessarily surprising given the relationship between Reno and the president.  
  
And relationship is, of course, a loose term. Reno is loyal, past loyal to a fault status and straight into loyal to the point of lunacy. It isn’t healthy to begin with, but Rufus seems to have a strange liking for Reno.  
  
“We can’t go in yet,” Tseng replies, voice calm and collected as usual. “The building is still too unstable. We’d do more harm than good by-”  
  
“Bullshit!” Reno interrupts with another furious shake, “You think he’s dead, don’t you?”  
  
Tseng doesn’t really lose his temper. None of them have ever seen it happen before and all the Turks just figure that he doesn’t get mad. His business face is his all the time face.  
  
And so the shine of rage in his eyes when he leans in and tells Reno to back off sends a cold shiver down everyone’s spine and thankfully, Reno is smart enough to let go of his jacket.  
  
“I’m still going in there,” Reno says firmly, “Fire me, shoot me, tie me up- I’m gonna find him.”  
  
Tseng’s lips press together in a stern line and he doesn’t give Reno his blessing, but he does close his eyes and turn around, facing away from Reno and the smoldering building.  
  
“You have half an hour.”  
  
Reno’s gone before Tseng even finishes the word ‘you.’  
  
  


rufus

He makes it out of the office, only to find the stairway has been blown to shit and not surprisingly, the elevators are broken.  
  
There’s a path from his perch on the top floor to the next floor down, but his ankle is only getting worse and he can’t afford to make mistakes. And although Rufus Shin-Ra never gives up, he comes pretty damned close to it until the ceiling begins to creak, making a decision for him.  
  
More than once, his foot slips and he has to flail to catch himself. Out of those times, the bit of rubble he reaches out for comes loose only one time and in that moment, he thinks he’s going to die.  
  
There’s no life flashing, no moment of realization where the world just kind of makes sense. He doesn’t figure out the meaning of life or see a bright tunnel. To his chagrin, all he can really think about from that moment on are the Turks- his poor, misled, puppy-dog Turks.  
  
He thinks about Elena and how nothing she loves ever sticks around or loves her back in the way she wants; how clumsy she is with the people that love her in earnest. Rude- the silent stoic guardian who never speaks, but Rufus can always tell with just one look what he’s thinking. It makes him a horrible, horrible agent- too easy to read, but Rufus keeps him because he’s compassionate.  
  
Tseng is a marvel unto himself. There’s no one like him in the world, no one as selfless and loyal (except for maybe Reno) and so willing to go the extra mile not for any self-promoting reasons, but because the company needs it, Rufus needs it. He’s the only person willing to step in when Rufus has gone too far, the father he never really had, and Rufus loves him dreadfully for it.  
  
And then there’s Reno. The enigma. The red-haired fireball with a heart of gold, even if he won’t admit it. Since the beginning, Rufus has always been attracted to Reno and he doesn’t even know why- it’s just one of those things that happens and he tried to ignore it for so long but Rufus is thinking that once he gets out of here, the first thing he’s going to do is-  
  
“Pres! President!”  
  
The shout is muffled by the building fallen to pieces around him, but it definitely isn’t a figment of his imagination. Rufus stills himself completely, his heart suddenly beating a little faster and he listens.  
  
“Are you alive?”  
  
Rufus rolls his eyes, but he clears his throat and shouts back, “I’m here!” only to choke and cough on the dry air. The floor he’s on begins to creak and moan under his feet and he limps, still coughing, as fast as he can to a more supported area, but not before the floor gives way beneath him with a sickening crack.  
  
  


reno

“I fuckin’ knew it,” Reno mutters to himself. He climbs faster, taking no heed of the way the jagged concrete and twisted iron cuts at his hands and knees. Rufus is more important than a few scrapes.  
  
He’s almost up to the next floor (he thinks the twenty-first, but he lost count a while ago) when a sudden rumbling makes everything around him shake.  
  
With a curse, he moves even faster, nearly tripping over his own feet in an attempt to get closer to the voice. He knows it’s Rufus- it can’t be anyone else. He’s alive.  
  
Heavy stone comes crashing down in front of him, sending out a huge cloud of dust and debris that obscures his vision and makes him cough and wheeze for breath. And he hopes that Rufus wasn’t in the middle of that- he has to continue believing that he’s still alive. He can’t go on without him.  
  
“Pres!” he shouts once more, moving blind towards the source of the crumbling, “Are you there?”  
  
Rufus’ voice is painfully close when he replies, “I’m right here-”  
  
Moments later his hand meet with soft flesh and cloth instead of more cold rock and he curls his fingers into Rufus’s waistcoat, tugging him into an embrace and sobbing dry against his shoulder.  
  
  


rufus

He hears Reno stumbling through the darkness and air-borne debris towards him before he can ever see him, and then there’s a hand clutching at his clothes and yanking him forward.  
  
For a moment, he can’t breathe again, but then Reno’s mouth is pressed up into his neck and he’s speaking softly- “I was so scared, I thought I’d lost you-” and Rufus relaxes into the touch. Reno is warm and shaking under his hands and Rufus runs them comfortingly over his back and shoulders for a little while, letting the moment linger for a bit before pushing him away gently.  
  
“We have to get out of here before more of the building collapses,” he says, tone softening from the harsh presidential bite to something much more intimate- “And thank you, Reno.”  
  
A blush vivid enough to match his hair, even though his face is covered with dirt, ignites across Reno’s cheeks and Rufus has to turn around and start walking again to keep from laughing.  
  
They walk, stumble, climb, and, in some places, crawl their way down the building and Rufus finds himself wondering how Reno could have climbed up this all on his own. Sure- he’s pretty agile- Rufus has seen him crawl up a brick wall with little more than half inch protrusions every few feet, but the vast amount of wreckage is unbelievable.  
  
He gets an idea of just how desperate Reno was to climb up the building when he catches a glimpse of his hands, bloodied and raw, and a pang of tenderness makes his chest tighten. Reno, he thinks, is the most devoted Turk he could ask for- on a business level. But more than that, he knows that the trust he enjoys from Reno is something earned, not given. It comes from something much deeper.  
  
“We’re almost out,” Reno suddenly says, tone light, “You can see the light over there.”  
  
The sun is rising when they emerge from the ruins, staining the horizon red and orange and Rufus has been in the dark for so long that he has to look away. It isn’t until that moment, once the danger is past that he becomes hyper-aware of his ankle throbbing unbearably hot that he leans on Reno, gripping a hand tight on his shoulder with a swallowed grunt of pain.  
  
“Where are the others?” Rufus asks, shoving down his needs for a moment, “Did they make it?”  
  
Reno nods. “Yeah. Tseng wanted to organize before going in to get you, but I-”  
  
“He jumped the gun, as always.”  
  
Tseng’s voice has a ring of amusement to it and Reno sticks his tongue out at his boss with a scowl.  
  
“We wouldn’t have been able to do what you accomplished, Reno,” Tseng continues, even as he’s closing in on Rufus and looking him over for injuries, “You’ve got a gift for this sort of thing.”  
  
Rufus lets Tseng play mother for a bit before finally slapping him away in lieu of greeting the rest of the team. They’re all unharmed, and more than happy to see him and Elena even cries a bit as she admonishes Reno for being reckless and then hugs him because he’s all right- they’re all going to be all right.  
  
The president is vaguely aware of everyone’s eyes on him when he breaks out into a wide smile, and then a soft laugh as he realizes- this is the only family he’ll ever need.  



End file.
